Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the The Planted Tank Forum forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Location

Your Location. As precise as you feel comfortable with.

Security Question

While balancing on a piece of wood, two inches by four inches known as a 2x4, John and his friend Sally both spotted a dalmatian inside of a truck with sirens. The animal with John and Sally is a _ _ _?

Insurance

Please select your insurance company (Optional)

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.

Additional Options

Miscellaneous Options

Automatically parse links in text

Topic Review (Newest First)

12-29-2004 11:11 PM

scalare altum

Those West Coast Canadians are really putting the East Coasters down, with their perfect aquascaping. I am going to have to straighten up and fly right. Ok Jart and I will kick some butt...

BRING IT ON!!!!

-Joel

PS-AMAZING TANK!

12-29-2004 10:57 PM

amanda huggenkiss

The only burrowers I've got here are MTS. Other than the shrimp, all other inhabitants of this tank are snails.

I seriously doubt that CO2 was the culprit here. I've only got a single Hagen unit on this tank, and the CO2 levels never get high.

12-29-2004 10:45 PM

John P.

Quote:

Originally Posted by amanda huggenkiss

I'm actually surprised that this all has seemed to affect the adult shrimp worse than the young shrimp. Most of the survivors are youngsters.

Interesting, b/c I experienced this, too, when I had massive shrimp deaths after relocating my tank. The youger ones must be more resilient. Resilient to what, though?

Has anything upset the substrate in the tank? Have you pulled roots, or are any of the animals in there burrowers? I have more theories than truths, but I think somehow an undetectable-by-"normal"-test-kits pathogen was at issue in my case. My plants stopped pearling/photosynthesizing, which meant the CO2 (with no O2 being produced during the day) choked the fish & shrimp at night (my CO2 used to run 24/7).

Have you tested the ph/kh to determine your CO2 level in the morning before the lights go on? Could it be that it affected the shrimp and the plants?

12-29-2004 10:21 PM

amanda huggenkiss

I'm guessing that the chloramine caused the deaths of the shrimp, and then all those dead shrimp maybe caused an ammonia/nitrite/nitrate spike (by the time I tested -- at the end of the day when I got home from work -- there wasn't anything to see tho).

I'm actually surprised that this all has seemed to affect the adult shrimp worse than the young shrimp. Most of the survivors are youngsters.

12-29-2004 10:16 PM

Momotaro

Yikes!

Judging by the Crypt, there has to be a pretty drastic change in your water parameters.

Hopefully it is the chloramine. It is east to treat and easy to prevent a reoccurance.

Mike

12-29-2004 10:09 PM

amanda huggenkiss

Crap...

Well I've been having trouble with this tank. A couple weeks ago, I had a billion happy healthy shrimp (okay, maybe not a billion, but lots). And then I saw some of my adult cherries dying over a few days. I checked my water params, and everything was fine, so I didn't get TOO concerned about it.

And then more of them died. And then I noticed that I wasn't seeing as many babies as I had before. That big beautiful crypt on the left melted overnight. Seriously. I went to bed one night, and I could see that something was brewing because a couple of the leaves looked a bit iffy, and I woke up the next morning and it was gone. Completely. Not a single leaf left.

What do you do when you see problems like this? Water changes. Of course.

Well, I heard from GDominy just before Christmas that he'd found out that they've been adding extra chloramine in the water lately because of all the rain we've been getting. So my water changes were just making it worse.

So now I've doubled the amount of Prime I'm adding to the water, and all I can do is wait this out. I still have some shrimp still in there, both greens and cherries, but it looks so bare now. This is so disheartening.

12-14-2004 07:38 PM

raykwonx

what kind of camera do you use? my digital has a hard time focusing through the water and catching any sort of movement, so unless the fish sit perfectly still for a second I can rarely get a pic of them.

12-14-2004 03:43 AM

amanda huggenkiss

Thanks Kris! I'd love to see some pics of your tank too!

12-14-2004 02:45 AM

Kris

amanda-
i have to add my kudos on tanks and pictures. you and i showed up on the forum at about the same time, but you're learning curve has been shorter/steeper/faster (?) than mine. wow. i am really impressed!
your cat is darn cute. mine have never gotten on the aquariums, i hope they don't as they weigh upwards of 20 pounds each!
kris

12-09-2004 05:47 AM

amanda huggenkiss

This is so cool.

Whenever I drop food in the tank, all my shrimp crowd around to get their share. Tonight, one of them was a green shrimp carrying eggs.

A couple hours later, after the light went off, I stopped by the tank to have another look, and I saw a teeny tiny baby shrimp on the glass. I mean a teeny tiny baby shrimp. I looked around a bit more and saw another one a few inches away. Looked around a bit more, and I saw the pregnant green shrimp (I could tell which one she was because she has a mark on the side of her head) -- and she only had a couple of eggs left.

Damn! If I'd been sitting there watching, I could've seen the babies born!!

11-24-2004 10:45 PM

amber2461

Hmmmm ... I remember that episode well the last time I was over.

11-24-2004 06:06 AM

amanda huggenkiss

Serves her right. She was racing around the apartment and decided to take a shortcut over the aquarium. Heh.

11-24-2004 05:57 AM

amber2461

... poor kitty.

11-24-2004 05:45 AM

amanda huggenkiss

LOL. Travis that almost happened to my cat too. Luckily the lid was only half open so she only got half wet.

11-24-2004 05:36 AM

travis

I love the tank and I especially love the photography Pictures of a quality rarely seen Amanda and Ed.

I'm new here and just finished reading this post for the first time. The pictures of your cat on top of the tank made me remember a story a friend told me about his cat and tank. It seems his cat loved jumping on top of his tank and watching the fish through the lid. He was cleaning the tank one day and had gone into the kitchen for something when he heard a splash and returned to the tank room to find a soaking wet cat hiding under a chair in the corner. It appears that the cat did not know the lid was open and had jumped up to do some fish watching and gotten a rude surprise :LOL: Both fish and cat were fine, just a little bit of a bruised feline ego.

This thread has more than 15 replies.
Click here to review the whole thread.